Apple belatedly posts updated iPhone firmware, references 3G

Apple finally got around to updating the beta firmware for iPhone and iPod …

Yesterday we told you about the pesky pink "install newer OS" screen that developers experienced when the beta firmware for iPhone expired at 12:01—quite unexpectedly. This left many developers with inoperable phones and resulted in a lot of head scratching. Turns out Apple did plan an update to the firmware; it was just fashionably late.

Early in the evening, developers started to receive emails from Apple indicating an updated SDK download was available from the iPhone Dev Center. The iPhone SDK is now at build 9M2158a and it is clearly marked "beta 3." The only information about changes in this release from Apple: "The third beta ?xes bugs and adds support for the latest iPhone OS." It appears Interface Builder still does not support all Cocoa Touch views and controls.

But wait... there's more! According to the creators of ZiPhone, a popular jailbreaking utility, the firmware contains references to an updated version of the iPhone's communications chipset. This updated chipset adds support for 3G networking, including WCDMA, the 3G flavor used in Japan and Korea. In addition, the chipset supports features like live recording and two-way video calls. It's not known if or when developer access to any of these features will be enabled by Apple, but it certainly gives rise to the notion that some very useful applications could be coming our way. This reference to the updated chipset certainly indicates (and to some of us, practically guarantees) that we will see updated 3G-capable iPhones when the 2.0 firmware is officially released in June.